


Watch it Burn

by unsettled



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-01
Updated: 2010-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blackwood doesn't believe in magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch it Burn

Blackwood doesn't believe in magic, which explains why he is shocked when he wakes to the smell of refuse and fish rather than the brimstone of hell. His eyes are greeted by dirt, and then as he raises his head, piles of filth and ramshackle buildings and familiar London fog. He is soaked, his body one giant mass of pain lashed nerve endings, and his head is throbbing. Slowly and shakily, he gains his feet, only to discover he can hardly put any weight on one ankle. He remembers the chain and weight round it, pulling him back, and sky before him, but nothing more. He would guess he had hit that water at some point, and is rather surprised that alone did not kill him. How he is not drowned or immobilized by a broken spine is beyond his capabilities to deduce for the moment; his main concern is shelter and warmth. He half staggers, half crawls to one of the buildings, more a pile of wooden slats than an actual structure, but he can hardly be picky.

It is there that he finds the paper, a fragment of text that declares Lord Coward's removal from the House of Lords and peerage, lists his supposed crimes, and announces his sentence to be hung. There is no date, and Blackwood feels cold band his heart. He needs more information.

The pain is unbearable, but he must bear it, so he staggers and limps a slow progress along the banks of the Thames, and it is some while before he begins to recognize his surroundings. He is headed in the wrong direction; Coward's home lies behind him. It is almost enough to fell him where he stands; he sways, but he has to know what has happened.

It is dark before he reaches the mansion, and he can see from across the street that it is deserted. His breath catches, and the doors are open, and the windows are shattered, and there are marks of soot on the marble. He is past cautious; he enters and everywhere, there is destruction, the contents burned and ripped and looted. Coward is not here, and here, written on the cheap paper plastered to the floor, is the confirmation of his fears. Coward is not in jail either, or even among the living. He was hung two days ago, and his death confirmed by three doctors, after a vigil of twenty four hours.

Blackwood thinks he will lie down and die here, among the remains of things he knew well, and it would be easy. No; his hand clenches around the sodden paper, _no_, he will not give up, despite the emptiness stretching before him. Before, it was the power, it was the order, it was the adoration in blue eyes. Now it is simply desire, simply rage; now, he wants nothing more than to see the whole world burn, and burn along with it.

He will rise again.


End file.
